I’ve been studying Blender for about a month at this point, and decided to give Mies van der Rohe’s Farnsworth House a go. Cycles is a joy to work with thus far, but I’m not sure about the best practices for lighting. Right now I’m using Blender’s World > Sky Texture, but not quite digging the omnipresent light source look. Would I be better off going with a three point lighting system as described elsewhere? Any critique would be appreciated.
The all-around world texture lighting very rarely a good idea on its own. It should be used as a subtle supplement to a better lighting system. Try a 3-point system (and some others) and see how it looks. The worst that can happen is that it doesn’t give you the desired look and you end up deleting three lamps.
I wish cycles was a joy for me, everytime I try and watch some tutorials my head starts to spin. Reminds me of my cabin down-state. We have it propped up off the ground to keep the snakes out, and it works. But with all those windows in the house and the time of day I don’t think the shadows in the house would be as dark as they are with all the bounced light the interior would be recieving. Your background trees are saying d*** it’s flippin bright out here, so I would expect some harsher shadows. Anyways I’m just going on what I can see in the photo. If your gonna stick with that background image I would try and match up with the image light source. All in all not bad dude. And again if the tall grass is what your going for then it belongs there, but besides be nicer looking it really reminds me of my hunting cabin. Nice job.